Magneto-optics in the Ultrafast Regime: Thermalization of Spin Populations in Ferromagnetic Films

We have characterized by pump-probe polarimetry the time-dependent dielectric tensor in a CoPt₃ ferromagnetic film excited by 20 fs laser pulses. It is shown that, after the thermalization time of the electrons ( ≃50fs), the dynamics of the real and the imaginary parts of the Voigt vector are identical. In addition, their relative variation is 10 times larger than that of the diagonal elements of the tensor, which allows one to infer that the spins dominate the magneto-optical response. During the thermalization process, the temporal behavior of the tensor elements opens new questions concerning the dynamics of the spins associated to a nonthermal electronic population in a ferromagnet.